Oh god, it was horrible!
by mandrakes
Summary: Humor or tragedy - pick your poison - in series of 51 entries full of oneshots and drabbles. “Darren, what’s wrong?” “Oh gods, Kurda, it was horrible! They –“
1. Surprise

_Books: 1- 5_

_Warning: Adult situation._

_Authors note: A bit out of character, perhaps, but I think any young child that grew up without appropriate socialization later in life would end up a bit over naïve. Critique and any comments (even, "this is nice, but use less big words!" Would suffice) are encouraged._

1. Immature

Darren wasn't the most insightful of people, but there were some things that even he should have been aware of at his age. His varied social shortcomings in certain areas weren't really his fault; he hadn't had the time that most children did to mature in a normal manner. Worse still, it became clear neither he nor his mentor were comfortable with discussing any of the more adult topics that he would have otherwise picked up from the television and his classmates.

No, this ignorance really wasn't his fault. Not really.

It had been just another night in vampire mountain, and outside the sun was beginning to turn the sky a pleasant golden-crimson. Most of the vampires had already wandered back to their rooms, some drunk, and others simply and ready to turn in after a long night of sparring and gorging themselves on bat broth. Tonight, however, a certain vampire's apprentice was returning to his rooms a bit late, having put in a good seven hours of training with Vanez, who was training him with a strong sense of urgency. This was easy to see and had the adverse effect of making the boy feel both panicked and inadequate.

Exhausted as he was, Darren hardly registered the names of the halls he was passing through, muscles aching and head pounding. His feet dragged along the rough-hewn floor, his movements ragged, and he was desperately propping himself up against the wall. This far away from the main hall the tunnels seemed to always become impossibly cold but his numb body didn't seem to register the sensation; that probably wasn't a good sign.

The boy stopped for a breather, supporting himself on the cave wall. After a few minutes of walking he had sufficiently recovered to lift his head and take in his surroundings, noting with a distinct rush of pleasure that he wasn't too far from the room he shared with Harkat on the outskirts of the warren of tunnels. As he gazed vacantly down the rough walls of the hallway he realized (with the kind of abruptness that seemed almost certain to get him into trouble, as he later observed) how much he could use the general comfort that his mentor was so selective about giving out. With all his bruises and sore muscles any excuse to keep from aggravating them in his hammock was a valid

one.

Maybe if he was lucky Mr. Crepsley would be a bit more sympathetic than usual?

Journey resumed, Darren followed a few adjacent passages, made a few turns, and managed to poke his head in a few wrong doors (for having survived the first trial he still had no sense of direction or distance). After a dodging a couple of projectile boots and yelped apologies he recognized the burlap-covered door to his mentor in the distance, partly hidden by a chunk of rock slanting down from the high ceiling of the tunnel. Darren's pace brightened a bit; he hadn't gotten to see much of the man for quite a while, with him training and Mr. Crepsley ferreting old friends out of hiding. Considering his earlier pace, the expanse of tunnel melted away, and he was quickly at the door. It wasn't in his nature to hesitate.

"Hey, Mr. Crepsley –"

He pulled aside the burlap and pushed into the room in one fluid movement, only to be blinded for a moment by the ink black room within. Strangely there were no candles lit, but he could feel the presence of movement in the room. His eyes adjusted to the gloom in the span of a second and the dark retreated. He almost immediately wished they hadn't.

His surroundings were exactly as they should have been - almost bare, save the narrow coffin in the corner and a small, claw legged wooden table with a few weapons and clothes folded and set carefully on top of it. Darren would have guessed that the vampire who occupied it had simply dozed off earlier that morning if the movement in the coffin hadn't caught his eye. He stared for a moment, shocked, and let out a frightened little squeak. His hands darted up to cover his mouth but it was a second too late.

Arra was perched on top of the shirtless vampire's hips performing thoroughly naughty acts to his chest, very much in the nude. As such, she was the first one to notice the young (now forever mentally scarred) intruder. Her normally low voice rose an octave.

"_Darren -"_ she screeched, jumping up with a snarl and darting behind the raised lid of the coffin. This appeared to break the spell over Mr. Crepsley, who – still wearing his pants, Darren was happy to see – sat up, looking dazed. His befuddlement lasted until he sat up stiffly, pinching the bridge of his nose. Distant though he was, it only took him a moment to notice the obviously disturbed thirteen year old boy with his hands fanned out over his eyes standing in the doorway. His face contorted just a little - and it was that little that one needed to pay the most heed to when he was angry. Clearly very unhappy that he and Arra had been interrupted, he launched himself out of the coffin with a growl.

Kurda Smalht needed a glass of water – so, of course, he had to walk all the way to the kitchens (maybe even the storerooms if he was unlucky) to get it. You could count on the vampires to come up with such an asinine system, he growled in his head. His hair was a mess and he was dirtying up his lovely powder blue pajamas. Still a bit groggy from half a nights sleep, he rubbed one of his eyes and made a right turn down one of the shortcuts he had discovered while mapping the tunnels.

The halls were quiet and the candles in the walls were burning low (he would have to remind Seba to send someone to replace them) and it was strangely surreal. He stopped, straightening one of the candles that had melted onto its niche in the wall. Then, suddenly, he heard a little squeak and his ears pricked up. Attention diverted, he resumed his walk.

About fifty more yards down the tunnel he heard another noise, louder than before. Suddenly, out of one of the uniform tunnel doorways appeared Darren Shan. The boy skidded on the damp, dusty floor, spotting Kurda with wide eyes and scampering over to the young man fearfully and grabbing onto one of the silk sleeves of the pajamas. The panicked glint to Darren's eyes immediately registered with Kurda, who quickly forgot about the glass of water and turned to his friend, concerned.

"Da_rren, what's wrong?"_ he asked gently, putting a comforting hand on the adolescent apprentice's shoulder. At first Darren simply stared at him, wide eyed and innocent. His mouth opened but no words followed. The boy shook his head and cleared his throat.

_"Oh gods, Kurda, it was horrible! They –"_ Darren whimpered, stopping as he caught sight of something over Kurda's shoulder. The soon-to-be prince spun on his heel and locked eyes on a disheveled looking Larten glaring daggers at the boy. He took a deep breath and raised his hands in a peaceful gesture, taking a couple of slow steps toward the red haired vampire.

_"Hold on, Larten, whatever happened it probably wasn't his fau-"_ Kurda reasoned, voice cutting off sharply as Mr. Crepsley snarled and took a violent dive at his apprentice. Darren was ready and leapt away, turning tail and bounding down the hall like the devil himself was after him.

As Darren sped off shrieking bloody murder the soon-to-be prince could only stare. A mixture of mortification and confusion had frozen him in place. Larten growled and ducked around the blonde, strides covering twice as much ground as Darren's. However, the half-vampire had the advantage of pure driving fear, and his feet hardly seemed to touch the ground as he sprinted down the hall. A couple of curious heads poked into the hall to see what was causing that bizarre wailing noise.

About two minutes later Kurda managed to shake himself from this stunned stupor and began the task of rescuing the young boy from his infuriated caregiver. When, halfway down the hall sprinting after the two, he looked back and noticed a half clothed Arra sneaking out of Larten's room, he didn't bother to stop and ask.


	2. losses

**2. Loses**

Books 1-12

Author's note:

I really do like picking apart motives, don't I? Yes, indeed I do.

I hope it satisfies, but rest assured, more will come. Additionally, I'm looking for a beta. Suggestions – or self-nominations, even, 'cause I'm wary of just searching the database and picking someone – would be much appreciated.

When Desmond Tiny looked back at the end of the day he noticed that - for the first time in ages - the losses he had incurred were greater than the gains.

He had raised all of his children with dedication and care - whether or not they decided to admit it - and this concern had not been entirely exclusive to his older children. It was true, admittedly, that he had spent many hours planning and playing with the individual lives of Darren and Steve. They had, in one of the more groundbreaking confrontations, caused the death of Hibernius, something that he did not appreciate. Still, the boys were his own flesh and blood, models after his own image and cast for his own entertainment. Perhaps that was why they had turned out so very harmful of to his plans?

Yes, they certainly _had_ been his; his waste, his folly, his error.

He did not intend to make the same mistake.

There would be some changes when he launched his next campaign.

Destiny had cared for both sons. He'd kept the game under control and provided for both with munificent interest. His selflessness had known no bounds – the hands of fate had places to be, things to do, and carnage to enjoy, but he had willingly given up a portion of his precious time in order to trouble himself with the complexities of one or the other's life – and ah, the distances between the two. They, perhaps, took the most effort to traverse. In retrospect, he should have foreseen the difficulty and kept them together for his own convenience.

To the observer it might seem a minimal setback; after all, the man could control time and space, warp it and wrap it around his finger with little more than a flick of his delicate wrist. However, the were insurmountable difficulties in this work, things too complex to be so much as comprehended by those beneath him, let alone handled.

Every individual effort he had lavished on both children was gone, evaporated, never to return. It was all his youngest's fault - a complete waste, and Desmond was not a wasteful individual. He knew that in the end at least one of the two would fail and he would lose that much, but such a loss was well worth what he would have gained from the remaining child. He had bet everything he owned on one horse, and it had died before crossing the finish line.

Now he found that when his efforts were frustrated he could become quite… irritated. Everyone knew that an irate Desmond Tiny was best avoided.

His rage at defeat was unparalleled, and it seemed that only recently his remaining offspring had entered the supposed rebellious stage. Hibernius, Darren, and Steve were all gone, dead of their own idiocy; their sister was still breathing (albeit with a bit more difficulty after he had punished her for her impertinence) and was carrying the mixed offspring of the two warring clans, an idea she had apparently devised after her brother managed to wriggle his way out of his familial commitment. It didn't used to be like this, he recalled. No one used to cheat destiny.

The halcyon years, it seemed, had passed. He was being forced out of his semi-retirement to create a suitable heir, so he could enjoy himself and remain an invulnerable presence in the lives of his playthings. More so, his efforts could no longer be half hearted; all his heirs seemed to develop a self-destructive streak - all but one, and she was unsuitable. Of his four children three were a waste, and the fourth he had forsaken. The deadline was closing in.

Something worried at the back of his mind and he relaxed, focusing on the sensation and handling the fragile design elegantly.

The cogs of his mind were set in motion in an instant; perhaps he would stick to daughters for a while. Yes, that might very well be it. Of his three boys none had survived; they were aggressive and stupid, while Evanna (the name was accompanied by a heavy feeling of distaste embittering his thoughts) had distanced herself and survived. Females were smarter, quieter, and more submissive; but they were also more adaptable, more mallable.

With the proper conditioning the good qualities could be exemplified and the poor ones stamped out… and – best of all – they seemed to be much better at surviving what Destiny threw at them.


	3. Metabolize

**3. Metabolize**

_Books 1- 4_

_Author's note:_

_Bat broth. It sounds downright nasty to me._

_This is rather long for a one-shot, but bear with me. _

_Hopefully the length won't betray the quality._

Darren quickly discovered after his arrival at Vampire Mountain that the rather spartan local cuisine was not exactly… appetizing. His years with Mr. Crepsley - the man could chop up carrots and onions, sure, but ask for spices and you'd get a lecture on how impractical it was to keep them and how useless they proved to be - had taught him how exquisite good cooking could actually be. Sure, nothing really tasted like something the cat puked up when you were good and hungry, but being caged in the mountain meant much, much less exercise; much less exercise led to a greatly decreased need for calories. The less hungry he was, Darren realized, the less tolerable the terrible cooking in the mountain was.

Everyone had his or her own opinion on the boy's apparent aversion to vampire cooking. Sitting down in the mess hall with Arra, Mr. Crespley and Seba was an experience he had made a mental note to not repeat anytime thereafter. Seeing the bat broth for the first time with an actual knowledge of what made it up made his stomach turn. The smell (which was oddly bitter, and now that he knew, hinted at what it was made of quite clearly) made him nauseous. Seba – who had brought some out from the kitchens along with a decanter of wine for the older three – seemed quite disappointed at the young boy's refusal to eat his cooking. Arra had noticed this and told him to suck it up, providing him with an extra serving 'to help him adapt to the taste'. Beside him a sour-faced Larten turned a blind eye to his attempts at pouring the extra soup into the older man's bowl, granting his assistant a considerable mercy when he finished it without protest a few moments later.

He was also reassured that he would acclimate to the food over a period of time. He ran across Kurda and Gavner in the soon-to-be-prince's quarters, the older general lounging in the blonde's coffin while he watched him scribble an artistic little key onto one of his more recent maps. When the bulkier man dozed off and began to snore he was promptly swatted over the head with a thick roll of parchment. In retaliation he reached out and swept the legs out from under Kurda, who landed with a loud _thump_ on the clammy floor of the chamber. Shaking his head and rising back up with as much dignity as he could muster, the rising prince gave Darren his advice.

"It's a matter of getting used to the taste." Kurda announced, fanning the air over his desk to dry the thick black ink he had been using. "You're used to human food – soda, candy, sugar – in addition to our more moderate flavors. It would be impractical and unhealthy to ship in barrels of sugar and most of the vampires would be too pompous to even consider it, so you'll have to cut it out of your diet cold turkey. Still, you might be lucky enough to get hold of some honey during the festival if you ask Seba." Darren was not in the quartermaster's best graces after Arra winnowed the truth about his remaining soup out of Larten and she tattled on him, so he supposed it was better not to step on the old man's toes. From what Mr. Crepsley had related in the few stories about his own apprenticeship to Seba (the tellings of which were often accompanied by red-facedness and fidgeting) it was clear that he was a risky man to cross. Regardless of his original opinion on the subject of upsetting Seba, after he woke up one night with a perturbed Seba Nile standing over him, holding a pot of thick soup over his head and threatening 'to do it!' with a rather malevolent glint in his eye did he begin to sleep with the set of daggers Mr. Crepsley had found for him.

His mentor, it seemed, had no particular opinion on his animadversion for the mountain food. He was busy digging up old friends and old enemies, although his assistant did not entirely escape his attention. Mr. Crepsley was sure to see his apprentice for a good two hours a day and encouraged the boy to mingle, often running him over to Kurda or Gavner when Harkat was busy for what might have served the same purpose as day care. After he was sure Darren had the majority of the tunnels well memorized and had something or other to do for the day the strange escort ritual began to let up a bit and Darren's freedom increased. Still, it was during one of the trips over to Kurda (he wouldn't leave the boy with Seba, who, he had noted, seemed to have it in for him at the moment) that he voiced his apparent disinterest.

" It does not matter to me, Darren, as long as you are consuming something in addition to your daily blood. However, it would be in your interest – and by extension, my own –" he murmured, recalling vividly the morning he had woken up and, as he left his cell, been hit by the contents of a projectile pot of soup aimed for his fast retreating apprentice, " to cease distressing Seba. It is neither wise nor sensible to upset him; you have heard my stories, and rest assured that from now on I have no intention of putting myself between the two of you." The news was not comforting but Darren did not regard his mentor's unwillingness to act as a shield for him as an insult – he knew very well that after years of being exposed to the tricky old man anyone would distance themselves when they suspected he was irate.

He found Arra practicing on the bars in the high-ceilinged cavern in which the vampires wrestled and sparred. It was completely deserted - save the two of them - during the dinner hour. For whatever reason she had decided to practice rather than eat, and Darren had been told there would be no bread or meat tonight, so he hadn't bothered going. He sat down cross-legged on the rough ground of the grotto to watch her for a while, and an erratic conversation (broken into sections of her lapses in concentration, so a reply could come in two minutes or twenty) developed between the two of them. When she asked why he hadn't gone to dinner she flashed him a predatorily patronizing grin. His reaction was a mumble even a vampire couldn't make out and a bit of nervous squirming. Amused by his unwillingness to offend her she somersaulted off the bars and landed a few feet away and waltzed belittlingly, giving his dirty hair a rather hesitant ruffling. She pulled back and wiped what she referred to as his 'disgusting hair grease' (after all, even a hardcore tomboy has her limits) off on her tunic. Instead of returning to the bars she readjusted her traditional ponytail and jogged out of the hall, calling back to the boy, "You'll never make a good vampire if you can't eat our food!"

Darren grunted in response and continued sitting for a few minutes, gazing off into space for no particular reason. When he finally got up he exited the hall and decided to return to the room he shared with Harkat. The trip back along the dismal tunnels was entirely uneventful, albeit a bit lonely. However, upon entering the modest room and pulling the burlap sack shut over the door he felt there was something amiss in the tiny room. The floor was gritty and slightly damp as always, the high, shadow-vaulted ceiling and rough-hewn walls both the same. He was shaking off his paranoia when he noticed a folded piece of parchment tied to his hammock with a frayed bit of netting. His laughing grin slipped a bit but he made his way over to the corner in which his hammock was anchored although he was sure he knew better. He took a puzzled glance around the room before reaching out for the note and grabbing the hammock to hold it still as he untied the slip of parchment.

Saying he was unsurprised when he heard the telltale whir of fast-moving string would have been a lie, but it certainly did provide a release for his nervous attention. The echoes bouncing off the ceiling made pinpointing the origin of the noise impossible so he took a frantic leap back – ah, too late. A shower of frigid bat broth cascaded out of the darkness and a huge iron pot flew down and crashed to the floor with an earsplitting clang. A couple of vampires passing the compartment jumped at the noise and, a moment later, both impressed and amused with the variety of swears that issued from the room in Darren's voice, which was still rather shrill due to his prepubescent physical age. After picking the largest chunks out of his hair and giving the pot an infuriated kick (which only succeeded in making his foot begin to throb) he stormed out into the hall to read the note:

_Thought we'd save some lunch for you._

_Cheers, _

_ Arra and Seba_

He was still for a moment (save the soup dripping from the end of his nose and running down his back onto the floor) just taking it all in. The half-vampire closed his eyes and took a deep, calming breath. A hand reached up of it's own accord and picked a stray chunk of the fowl tasting stew out of his hair. His brown eyes shot open, with a slightly hysterical glint flashing on their surfaces. He knew what he had to do.

The next evening Larten, Kurda, and Gavner joined him at one of the tables in the mess hall. He'd been up all day but his success had kept him up; and here he was, eating the bat broth he'd gotten from Seba that morning. He received strange looks from all three, but Mr. Crepsley was the first one who spoke.

"Darren, you are conscious of what you are eating? I thought you did not like bat broth," he stated dryly, reaching for a half loaf of bread from around Gavner's shoulder. Darren – whose mouth was full of the stew – simply nodded.

"See, I told you you'd get used to it," Kurda asserted, throwing an arm around Darren's shoulders and giving him a friendly squeeze. The soon-to-be-prince was under the impression that Darren needed to experience more affection to develop properly, regardless of his current mental age. Gavner was just about to put in his piece when Darren shook his head and swallowed. He turned toward his mentor and his self-satisfied grin grew wider.

" Do you remember the stories you told me about when you were apprenticed to Seba, Mr. Crepsley?" he asked, pleased with his own cleverness, " I got the idea from one of them, actually."

He grinned wider at them and stuck out his tongue. It was a rather dark shade of red and a multitude of patchy blisters. In some places it looked as though a bit of the skin had peeled away, but the most obvious thing was that there no longer appeared to exist any taste buds – they had all been burned off. Kurda looked shocked (and maybe a bit ill) and Gavner looked over at Larten with glee; he'd really rubbed off on Darren since he last saw him at the cirque. Larten Crepsley, however, had pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes tightly, exasperated.

He made a mental note to find Seba and convince him to go a bit easier on his apprentice.


	4. Scrub

**4. Scrub**

Books: 1-4

Author's note: Sorry this took so long to churn out; my muse has fled. But, on my tongue, I swear I shall return to my churning-out-things glory without delay… Man, I do love criminally insane Seba. XD Wonder what got them into so much trouble, don't you? Perhaps you'll get an answer in the next update.

There was an uncanny resemblance visible between mentor and apprentice, especially as they sat together in one of the large kitchen's scrubbing off a crusty-black layer of burnt on stew from a giant metal pot. The two were seated side by side on an old, worm eaten crate, each armed with a damp rag to rub away the charred bits from the worn, dented metal. A few yards away the mountain's quartermaster peeled a pile of potatoes, face stretching with sadistic joy whenever he looked up from his work and watched the two struggling with the burned on mess of stew.

In order to reach the charred black bottom of the container it clearly had to be tilted back (unless one or the other felt up to getting covered with the charred shavings they were so busy scraping loose by flipping the pot completely over) at a rather sharp angle. Larten realized this quickly and moved to the other side of the vessel, pushing it up onto one side to provide Darren better access to the bottom. The heavy metal groaned in protest as the vampire struggled to continue to hold it high enough for his apprentice to reach. He gritted his teeth and braced the bottom of the pot against his shoulder, biting his tongue against what felt like the separation of his shoulder from his torso.

If Mr. Crepsley hadn't been so preoccupied with fighting the immense weight he might have caught Darren's obvious reluctance to get near the precariously balanced pot, and perhaps even scolded him. However, after a moment of hesitation (during which the boy could feel Seba's eyes burning noticeably into the back of his head) he sucked up his fear and moved closer, starting on what was sure to be a long and arduous task. The strained face of his mentor disappeared as he squatted and began chipping away the burnt material. His actions were awkward and edgy, and the boy was obviously ill at ease working beneath the pot.

When dealing with heavy items - especially those suspended by a means as unpredictable as a single persons strength – instincts are often best listened to. Seba had only just turned his attention back to the task of peeling a particularly resistant potato when the pot came crashing down with an ear-splitting clang. It echoed through the darkness like a shot of thunder, spitting and hissing viciously like an irritated cat. The half vampire was lucky enough. Darren – full of nervous adrenaline as a result of being trapped in the shadow of the groaning iron monster - darted out of the way almost instantly, only just avoiding complete annihilation.

He was relieved for half of an instant until the shock ebbed away and he felt the agonizing throbbing in his left foot. He shoved one shoulder against the upturned metal pot and shoved, freeing his foot. The boy was completely still for a moment, eyes wide and lips pressed closely together. Larten could have sworn he'd seen tears welling at the corner of each eye, but the light had been dim. Suddenly, Darren's eyes clenched shut and he took a deep breath. His mouth opened and his face contorted with pain.

" OW!" he yelped, eyes going wide again as his vanez-influenced vocabulary kicked in, and did so quite loudly indeed, " BLOODY DAMN MOTHER F-"

Mr. Crepsley had fallen back when the weight of the pot had finally got him and was only just recovering when he noticed the accident and heard the child's pained yell. He immediately jumped up and was behind the boy in a flash, clasping a disgustingly dirty and sweaty hand over his apprentice's vulgar mouth. Darren growled and writhed for a moment and then seemed to come suddenly to his senses. He slowly stilled, eyes coming to focus on the hunched over form of Seba Nile, who had stopped peeling and was watching mentor and mentee with narrowed eyes.

From behind him, Darren felt Mr. Crepsley take in a shivering breath.

Seba shook his head slowly, while getting to his feet and setting the potato and knife down. He turned to the two, somehow managing to meet both of their gazes flawlessly. He raised a hand and brushed away a couple of stray peelings from the front of his rough crimson robe. The tension in the air grew heavier, and Darren bit his lower lip hard enough to draw blood, taking a step backward into the chest of his mentor as Seba approached.

"Now, I gave you two a way to make up for your misbehavior. I allowed you mercy, an easy job in exchange for forgiveness. Do not make noise, I said. I know you are skilled enough where it comes to silence - you are my own little fledgling after all, Larten - but it seems…" he crooned, moving carefully closer to the huddled pair, "Well, I do fear that you will have to pay the full penalty."

Darren shivered fearfully and edged away from the approaching Seba, trying to hide himself behind Mr. Crepsley without either of the vampires noticing. Larten was a bit too observant for the boy and grabbed him by the back of the neck, anchoring him in place. Seba smiled wide, and Darren wondered exactly how long it took a vampire cooped up in the mountain to go completely insane.

"Seba, please, it fell on his foot… and I did not say a thing." Larten begged, eyeing his old master with carefully and still clutching his apprentice tightly. Darren remained silent, wide-eyed and frowning in his mentor's grasp.

The old quartermaster remained silent, eyeing the two as his wide, ferocious grin grew. That was all Darren needed, and more than he could take. The boy renewed his efforts to get away from Mr. Crepsley; to get out of there before it was too late. Larten, however, had no desire to be left to take the brunt of Seba's punishment alone, especially when he saw it as the boy's fault that they were doomed. Mr. Crepsley wrapped his arms around Darren in a bear hug and lifted the frantic child a few inches off the ground. The tactic did seem to calm him; although Larten couldn't help but give him a tighter-than-necessary squeeze each time the boy kicked him in the gut. Darren finally stilled, panting, as a result of the punishing restriction of his breathing; the exhausted vampire made a mental note to try cutting off his charge's supply of oxygen to settle him down in the future.

Seba had begun his own little aside and was muttering darkly to himself in a dark corner where two of the tall shelves met. Snatches of his words could be caught but all were so nonsensical neither vampire nor apprentice bothered to listen, only stood in silence until the murmurs stopped. The old man suddenly quieted his muttering and ran down the isle, turning at a corner and disappearing from sight. Darren stopped fighting Mr. Creplsey's hold, his left eye twitching slightly. The two looked at one another, and Larten slowly set his apprentice down.

"W-Where did he go?" Darren asked, glancing over and seeing his own confusion manifesting itself on his mentor's face as well

"I cannot so much as imagine. However, I suggest we make ourselves scarce before –" Larten was cut off as Seba reappeared at the end of the isle, and he snapped his mouth shut. The two froze as the second oldest vampire made his way down the isle, carrying two long, narrow boxes. They gleamed smoothly in the candlelight and were studded with a few shiny metallic screws to keep them from falling apart. The grain of the darkly stained wood was sanded and even, ominous in its splendor. Mr. Creplsey quickly grabbed Darren, who was tensing up and getting ready to make a run for it.

Seba closed in.

The quartermaster handed each a box and took a few steps away, motioning for them to open the tiny containers. Their was a moment of shock, and then another of reluctance. Finally, the two victims took a look at one another and opened the proudly decorated boxes.

"Toilet brushes?" Darren asked, looking up with a look of confusion on his face.

Mr. Crepsley caught on a bit faster than his young apprentice. His face began to change colors, cheeks gaining a strange green tint as he stared at the brush. He raised a spidery hand to his mouth and his eyes bulged; suddenly he ran to the end of the isle and retching noises echoed down the isle of crates. Darren glanced to seba, a look of disgust evident on his features. When he spoke his words were soft and tense.

"The mountain doesn't really even have toilets… what exactly are we even supposed to do?"

"You'll find out," Seba assured him. The smile stretching his wrinkled face grew even wider.

"Is it really that bad?"

" Oh yes," Seba responded, catching Darren's wrist as he attempted to bolt from the storerooms. Listening to the retching come to an end, Seba knew that this was going to be very, very interesting.


	5. Situations

**5. Situations**

Books: 1-12

Author's note: This is a bit more freeform that usual, but enjoy it if you can. 3

All the numbers are unrelated. Allow me to warn you; there might be a couple subtle hints at certain, unspecified pairings in here, but it's all in the eye of the beholder. :o

EDIT: A few were added, and many rewritten to improve their clarity.

1. Fraction

Kurda had bullied, dragged, blackmailed, and threatened to get most of the vampires present into the dark little cavern they were sitting in. Beside him – his ego thoroughly inflated – Darren was grinning like an idiot. A few yards off, Harkat was scratching his head in puzzlement at the algebraic equation Kurda had scratched onto the smoothest wall of the cave. The young man regarded the chaotic scene dryly, and wondered why nobody seemed even vaguely upset that they were being left in the intellectual dust by a boy no older than fourteen.

2. Muck

As Gavner and Larten carefully crossed an immense, bleak grey swamp, Gavner couldn't help but give into temptation – and so, he gave the red haired man the smallest of pushes. He already knew very well that the deed would return to bite him in the ass, but he was more than sure that it had been worth it when Larten resurfaced covered in muck, gasping furiously and growling like an irate dog.

3. Company

Only on the way to vampire mountain – when the valleys lay spread beneath them like hills of butter beneath the magnificent quarter moon, and their breathes rose is little puffed clouds of vapor in the frigid air while they huddled together for warmth – did Darren truly forgive Mr. Crepsley for snatching him. It took a great leap of thought, but, he concluded, the man wasn't quite as terrible as he had made him out to be.

4. Directness

In public – before all the others, where Steve played the master and Gannen played his obedient, if reluctant, mentor – the two vampaneze were formal, icy, and emotionless with one another, playing the roles that had been bestowed on them when Steve managed to exit the coffin of fire unscathed. It was only in private, when the older vampaneze sat beside his student and wrapped one strong arm around his shoulder in a comforting gesture, did Steve admit that he was afraid, and that every day he felt a little bit more of that part of him he was afraid of rose to the surface, like a bloated, sunken body rising to the surface.

5. Mild

He knew that his death – a grain of sand in an endless desert – would count for little in the long run. He also knew that dying now would be so much easier than living on as all the others would, when the clan faced destruction at the hands of the vampaneze lord. The thought brought a mixture of unwelcome feelings; fear, disgust, pity, and a sick, backward, vengeful delight that he did his very best to ignore all together. A kind of panic rose in his throat as the huge doors to the hall of death opened, and he took a deep breath, fighting for calm in the storm of sensations and feelings. The boos and shouts of the vampires melted into a slurred roar, and he knew all he could do now was hope that the next person to be executed would not be the lithe, brown haired boy that he had shared so many good times. He sighed and his composure – his failsafe and his trademark – prevailed and he walked toward the pit without regret, strong and gallant to the very end.

6. Laceration

It wasn't so much the fact that Kurda had slapped a industrial-sized bandage on the nasty, infected cut he hadn't been able close with his spit. No, it was more the fact that the bandage was a brilliant shade of lavender that had caused Gavner to break into a frenzied fit of laughter.

7. Crowd

The idiom that 'three's a crowd' seemed to ring the truest on the days that Larten and Arra were completely unable to shake the young apprentice off their tail. Some days Harkat took pity on them, and went so far as to drag the boy away from them for a couple of hours each day.

8. Engine

When Darren – who, like many boys his age, had never quite gotten over the 'car' phase - heard two of the older vampires discussing horsepower he became very excited, only to move closer and discover they were discussing actual horses.

9. Concern

The nawing sensation that was almost omnipresent in his gut now that he had accepted the task of keeping Darren safe (spare a dog from a tiger and its life is yours to defend for the rest of your own) had slowly become familiar enough that Harkat learned how to ignore it all together.

10. Mentality

Strangely enough, a few years after the death of Vancha March it became a standard practice in the mountain to teach his fatalistic fighting mentality to all the new general recruits – something that might have pleased him if he'd been anywhere below paradise.

11. Rushing

Seba had always chided his assistant for his impatience, but rushing into a decision and blooding a child managed to change the course of history and prevent, if only for a while, the destruction of the world as vampire-kind knew it. As far as Seba was concerned, that mistake really took the cake.

12. Protective

"Ahhhh…" the red haired teen yawned, leaning back onto his arms beside his female counterpart. He raised his hand to his mouth again, another little yawn gracing his lips – and out stretched the hand, just aching to secure itself around around the limber form beside him. Closer, closer, closer – THWACK!

"AH!" Larten yelped, recoiling from the blow. A wooden broom handle now separated the pair of young lovers, held tightly in the arms of a middle aged woman. Her dark eyes were narrowed and her lips pressed together tightly.

"None of that, Master Crepsey!" the woman snarled, tapping the wooden handle on the ground with a sadistic grin. Beside him, Arra simply rolled her eyes at her mentor, although she could feel a smile edging its way onto her lips.

13. Successor

As Paris slipped out of the tunnel and into the night for the final time he couldn't help but wonder who would take up the gauntlet and fill the soon to be vacant position. There were so many options, each one distinctly promising – a new generation would put a prince on a throne, much as they had done with young

Darren. He only hoped that whoever it turned out to be would have the skill needed to end the war with the vampaneze and help the clan come out on the better side of it.

14. Tonight

"What're we going to do tonight?" Gavner asked, glancing at Kurda out of the corner of his eye. The hungry glint in his eyes was not particularly comforting, but it sent a powerful shiver down the blonde's spine, just the way he liked it.

15. Structure

When Darren showed up at Gavner's door one night (or, rather, day) complaining that he was bored and couldn't sleep and no one else was in their rooms, Gavner decided the boy could do with more structure (after all, that's what all the child psychologists said). Still, he couldn't help but marvel at how cute he looked when he fell asleep in Gavner's coffin, even when he woke up in the morning with a stiff back from sleeping on the floor.

16. Revenge

It proved to be a less than wise idea to try to pull a prank on Arra Sails, as Gavner and Larten discovered the morning after they had trapped her in a coffin overnight at one of the waysides just west of the mountain. The next evening they woke up itching and burning, covered in the waxy leaves of a poison oak.

17. Resignation

There was a certain amount of resignation in his voice when Darren agreed that taking a sack of hard candy to the mountain on foot would have been a somewhat impractical endeavor.

18. Shaping

Sitting by the restless, heavily burned boy who had just come through his third trial he realized just how intimately these examinations were shaping his assistant. The paternal, sensitive side told him that he should be more protective and defend what is comparable to his adopted son; the other growled and spat at the idea, arguing that the survival fittest. After all, if he was unable to complete the trials on his own, what would he do with the child when he reached physical adulthood and had to learn how to live unattended? He never reached an official position on the matter.

19. Assertion

Arra Sails had easily disproved the assertion that female vampires were useless slabs of meat, but she certainly hadn't changed the men's opinion about woman during that terrible time of the month that everyone within her striking range learned to fear.

20. Agreement

When he and Steve had been friends as children some people were under the impression that Darren's continual agreement with his friend had been because he had been somewhat intimidated by him. They were very much mistaken. Looking back, it was only another piece of the puzzle when they were informed of their blood connection; two sides of a coin, night and day, the sons of fate in all it's fury.

21. Life

When Mr. Crepsley finally worked up the gut to explain the birds and the bees to his now psychologically scarred apprentice he had been forced to enlist the help of both Kurda Smalht and Arra Sails. Kurda was given the duty of holding Darren still and keeping him from covering his ears, while Arra had the pleasure of filling him in on the more feminine side of things. Darren was released at dawn, and walked away wide-eyed and knowing more than he had ever wanted to.


	6. Wine

**6. Wine**

**Books:** 1-4

_Authors Note: __I yield to my reviewers' demands. 3_

…_Plus, I was sick, so I had free time. Hope this fills some terrible empty void or other within all of your souls. XD_

" You know you want to, and I swear it'll be worth it. Arra told me exactly where and everything!" Darren babbled excitedly, pulling a pale-faced Larten Crepsley behind him by the sleeve as he maneuvered them both toward one of the side entrances to Seba's storerooms. The halls were deserted and quiet – with the sun at it's peak outside the mountain the majority of it's inhabitants were asleep – and the torches burned low, some reduced as far as to embers with no one to attend to them.

As they turned a corner a narrow door made of thin, discolored wood came into view and Darren put on a burst of speed, his mentor lagging behind him as sweet temptation loomed ever closer. Larten Crepsley was reluctant to cross his old teacher out of experience; after all, no one outwitted Seba Nile. Darren, it seemed, had not learned this rule of thumb. However, the crafty old man did have an incredibly impressive store of vintage wine at his fingertips, and tonight would be occupied late discussing historical strategy with the princes. Bitten as he was as a youth (a night of being violently sick after drinking half a barrel of vinegar tends to put one off seeking a repeat performance) the vampire was somewhat resistant to risking another harsh castigation by Seba's hand – after all, whatever reprieve he next incurred would surely be worse than those before it, and Seba always had been skilled at devising punishment.

Ahead of him, Darren had reached the door. He stood with a hand resting on the tarnished wood, looking expectantly at his approaching mentor. The other pale hand was placed lower on the door, tapping the black-painted iron casing and doorknob. He greeted the older man with a childish grin and moved aside, giving Mr. Crepsley room to word. The man reached forward, and then suddenly hesitated. He looked sideways at his apprentice with narrowed eyes.

" You are sure you know exactly where everything is?" he questioned bleakly, gaze turning back to the lock and his irresolute hand that just brushed the doorknob. It was not too late to turn back.

" Of course I do." Darren insisted, motioning vivaciously toward the door and drawing the map in the still air before him.

Larten sighed, rubbing his fingers briskly together to create enough of a static charge to manipulate the antiquated lock set in the old door. After a few seconds he brushed his hand gently across the rough, peeling black paint that coated the metal casing and a subdued click sounded, slicing through the stagnant air. As he took a step backward Darren darted forward, lifting the latch with care to quell the telltale groaning that was the trademark of the few hinged doors to be found in Vampire Mountain. The wood shivered and grated in protest, but careful maneuvers stifled the loudest groans until the gap between door and wall was wide enough for them both to slip through.

Darren looked back with a beam that resurfaced many a fond memory of Larten's mischief when he spend his first council (alongside a young Gavner and Arra, of course) in the mountain with Seba. A tiny spark of rascality resurfaced in those travel-worn green eyes and he cast a quick glance behind into the deserted corridor. He could feel the long lost thrill of insubordination coming back to him, and a certain element of vigor quickly followed. Larten had reentered a long lost world of youth, and it was simply euphoric.

The half-vampire slipped through the aperture first, leaving the flickering, dying glow of the torchlight. Huge silhouettes loomed over him in the bleak cavern, completely unlit with the absence of the quartermaster of his assistants. Rows upon rows of crates, boxes, barrels, and sacks of supplies were illuminated by the glowing moss that was so common in the lower, less traveled tunnels; they occupied an endless maze of caverns and tunnels, places into which even the bravest of vampires would not willingly enter without one of Kurda Smalht's maps. Self-satisfied and smirking, Darren glanced back around and watched the dark silhouette behind him slip into the storeroom. He figure shut the door behind him with a muted click. A hand gripped the half-vampires shoulder tightly as his mentor drew level with his, bending down to whisper in the boy's ear.

" The wine is stored furthest from this door, is it not? We will go there first," he announced, straightening back up to his full height when he received a nod in agreement. Darren started forward; he stepped silently, leading his mentor down one of the rows of shelves. Arra had provided him with a very good map only just the other night – apparently she had decided that it really was cruel to keep sugar away from little boys. So far, Darren was pleased that things had gone as well as they had; there hadn't been any drunken vampires stumbling about in the lower halls to avoid, nor was there a soul in the storerooms as he'd often seen, taking a last minute stock check or fetching supplies for the mess hall. He'd been worried that Kurda might have noticed that he was up to something but the soon-to-be-prince hadn't suspected a thing; he was a bit too preoccupied with Gavner, Darren reasoned with an open, affable smirk. Confident now in his breaking-and-entering skills he led the way with certainty, leading his mentor without pause to the racks and barrels of bittersweet inebriants.

The particular strain of alcohol Larten was after was superior to the common supply in that it had been aged for generations to maximize its strength. He'd heard that only a small glass could set one's head abuzz, and that two would ensure the wonderful state of inebriation. Seba, Mr. Crepsley knew, was very particular about keeping it stored safely and had upped the security of the storerooms as a whole when he last caught a few wayward vampires trying to make off with some of his better wines. After a few of these incidents the first doors were raised in Vampire Mountain, all of them for the purpose of keeping the common property from being filched by young and foolish vampires.

With the record that he had, this knowledge might have brought the faintest of blushes to Larten's cheeks. Still, youth had him in a stranglehold by the throat, and not unlike his own apprentice he always relished outwitting and defying his mentor. The risks were not always worth the gains, but a challenge was a challenge and life lacked interest without something to defeat. This seemed to be a very common mentality among the vampires.

A few yards ahead of Mr. Creplsey Darren caught his foot on the edge of a large crate and lost his balance; his arms flailed wildly but missed any holds they might have caught on the crates and sacks beside him. Falling forward, the boy froze as the ground rushed up to meet him; catching sight of his apprentice Larten reacted in an instant, darting forward and catching him by the back of the neck. Both of them stayed as they were for a moment –uncomfortable for Darren as is was, with sharp fingers biting into his neck and scratching his skin - breathing shallow and quick in the face of what might have been detection. The vampire regained his calm first, pulling the nearly horizontal body of the child back up onto his feet. Darren slumped visibly with relief, his neck forgotten as soon as he had regained his balance. The boy glanced back at his mentor and – satisfied that they could move on safely – began to lead the way again.

Treading with more care than before, Darren led them around another corner of boxes and kicked a loose pile of burlap sacking out of the way to clear the path to the dark alcove of stone shelves. Following suit, Larten grinned. He slipped forward effortlessly, standing next to his apprentice with twitching lips.

"Go and get your jars of honey and meet me back here," he ordered, giving Darren an affectionate pat on the head, " Then we will go – but do be careful."

"I'm on it." Darren agreed, amusedly watching the older man as he turned around. His footsteps grew quieter and quieter until they disappeared into the silence and darkness of the cavern.

Larten turned back to the shelf, blowing on the seasoned shelves to unearth the carved names and years of each variety, all hidden beneath layers of mottled dust. Once they were obvious the man took a step back and set about choosing the vintage he wanted. Finally, he unearthed an older red variety that he'd remembered helping Seba store when he was a novitiate vampire himself. He reached forward and traced the date of it's bottling with a sigh of contentment. He leisurely withdrew his hand and reached forward to encircle the small cask of wine with one of his arms.

He was about to touch the cool wood of the keg when a hand clamped down on his shoulder and pulled him backwards. For the first time in nearly a decade Larten lost his balance and fell flat on his rear. Embarrassed and blushing, he snarled and whipped around violently to chastise his idiotic apprentice.

"Dar-" he hissed, voice cutting off as he saw who was behind him. His countenance shifted almost immediately from one of flushed anger to one of polite, subordinate respect. He reached out a tentative, welcoming hand. Seba looked down at it and then back up at larten, an ominous upward curve appearing on his lips.

"Ah, Seba! What a pleasant surprise…" Mr. Crepsley murmured, beaming in a childish attempt at appeasing his former teacher. Seba was grinning as well, but a smirk from Seba was more than enough to put anyone on edge.

"Larten! Admiring the wine, were we?" Seba simpered, watching his former apprentice pull himself to his feet and brush the dirt off his soiled cloak. The old man had grown stooped and spotted with age, but somehow he still possessed the ability to stand tall enough to intimidate, and had the disconcerting facility to seem as though he was always looking down on those he scolded. Feeling younger than he had in ages (in a way that was not half as enjoyable as his earlier 'rush of youth'), Larten Crepsley was unsure as to how to respond.

"Ah… yes. So I was. I suppose there are better times to do so, correct? I had better go then…" he stuttered, stumbling over his words and taking a few careful, uncertain steps towards the distant exit. The tiny door in the wall seemed to shrink even further, and – unlike Alice – he had no size altering medication to help him escape the danger.

"No, Larten, I think you had better wait for Darren. It would hurt his feelings if you left without him, no? He should be along in a minute."

"What are you – " the mortified Larten inquired, voice stopping not far into his frantic attempt at defense. As though on queue he saw a faint flicker of movement in the darkness down the row. The echoes of quiet footsteps could be heard, the younger vampire noticed, but they were too heavy to match Darren's light tread. The sea of gloom seemed to part as the figure- the silhouette was misshapen and corpulently grotesque from the distance at which the two men stood – drew closer was illuminated by one of the patches of fungus.

Arra Sails was grinning playfully at him and - even at a distance - a familiar sparkle of impishness was discernable in her gaze. Over her shoulder was a rather limp looking Darren; it was quite obvious his chest was rising and falling, but Larten couldn't help but feel sorry for the boy – any hit from Arra would hurt in the morning, and she'd probably managed to give him a small concussion. He returned her grin guiltily, then turned back timidly to Seba, chin held close to his chest in subordination.

Seba and Arra looked at one another, both looking quite obviously entertained that he had been caught with a hand in the cookie jar. Larten, however, was unamused; he was busy worrying about what exactly his old mentor intended to do to him once they left the storerooms. He truly hoped it would not involve vinegar.


	7. Distress

**7. Distress**

Book 1-2.

Author's Note: Cute, in an offhand way, but much less humorous than usual. This is what you get when I'm stuck home with a sinus infection. :d

Need to level the ratio.

And I must say, many thanks to you reviewers! 3

Even if you shouldn't be, you're the ones who keep me going.

And to prove it, this is mega-long. XD

The first few months after Darren was torn from his family were the hardest. Larten was impatient and harsh, trapped in a residual bad mood - his new pupil was equally petulant and moody. The child avoided him and snapped at him, intentionally provoking with every action and word.

Verily, the older vampire was no fan of moping and melancholy; they were qualities that infuriated him to no end. Needless to say, the tantrums were viewed poorly and often punished, to some degree; and after years studying under Seba Nile, Larten was no stranger to punishment himself. Yet, even in his terrible humor he was loath to further stress his relationship with the boy, who was in a volatile enough state as it was. The bond between them was to be watched and measured, guarded like the treasure beneath the gaze of a dragon; after all, no student could learn while fearing their teacher, and no teacher could educate without the attention and respect of their pupil.

There had to be boundaries, Larten reasoned. The child was like an uncontrollable colt; he was spirited, valiant and headstrong. All of these were qualities the clan viewed as admirable – and he would work as the craft master, tempering, molding, and mending them, as they should be. In order for the boy to survive among his newfound brothers of the night he must learn his place among them, learn to bend to the will of his princes. It was his duty, as the man and artist who was to fashion the boy, to achieve this end using whatever means he dubbed expedient.

The matter of Larten's control over the child finally came to a head on a night of moonless sky and ice. He had walked in the lead, with Darren following reluctantly a few yards behind, as if pulling at invisible string binding him to the vampire. His mind had drifted for a time – as all great minds must – and when he glanced back over his shoulder to check on his apprentice saw, instead, nothingness.

It had been a bitingly cold night in early January; snow fell lazily from darkened clouds, freezing to the bark of the bare-branched conifers that grew in walls on either side of the narrow deer-path that the two were traveling along. A light fog made the distance appear unending, and the shapes of drifts of snow rose like ghosts against the grey backdrop. Above their heads, branches whorled and clung to the graying sky.

It took a moment for the emptiness to register, and he cleared a further five feet of snow before it occurred to him that he should stop. The icy throbbing of his extremities faded, a sudden sea of fury rising in his throat –and at his sides both elegantly calloused hands clenched into fists. There was a moment of silence and stillness that would have frightened any observer; the air trembled with glaring, shuddering rage. _Enough_, a tiny voice whispered deep in his mind, _was enough_.

He wheeled violently, eyes flashing in the lightless night, and snarled. Almost as quickly his feet found their rhythm (his step was quick and practiced – furiously passionate) in the snow, and he backtracked at a jogging pace with his eyes trained on the obscure end to the tapering, twisting path. The dead, desiccated stalks of grass that managed to break the surface of the deep snow bent beneath his weight and the ground flashed past beneath his shoes.

His pace increased, falling only short of a run, and his eyes caught a hint of color in the pall. A splash of red marked the snow, and a trail of drops led off the path to the trunk of a rotten old oak tree. Fury ebbed in a sudden change of tide, and bare-boned fear for his apprentice slowly dribbled in to replace it. He stared at the trail for a moment, standing rigidly, a drop of solidity in a slowly dissolving world. Shock – like anger had only moments ago – slipped away in a split-second rush and he had the power to move again; the distance between the path and the hollowed out tree was gone in the blink of an eye.

"Darren –" he hissed, bending down in front of the tree, where the smell of blood battered his senses and pushed him to the very edge of comfort.

No answer came. He bent over further, peering through the gap in the trunk that the child had crawled through; and inside he could just make out the prone form, curled beneath the pack that the vampire had prepared for in an effort to keep warm. Blood oozed from a long cut along the child's temple. The vampire cursed and pulled back, ripping out a long swathe of rotting bark to gain access to the unconscious boy. Reaching inside, he gathered him up into his arms and inspected the injury. The cut was long but quite shallow, so Larten removed his cloak and wrapped it around the shivering body and – holding it close – began to run.

_wet, cold, shivering – he can't stay here, no, NO! red –bright, violent, bad, the color of terrible and painful things – interposes itself stubbornly in his view, burned into the very fabric of the synapses that make up his life, slowing down in the terrible, saturated cold that saps his energy… damn that tree, all the branches that split off from life, all the possibilities that lie in the future and will never be realized or drawn from. and the wind is, he knows, howling in his ears and he can't escape - never ever ever. _

He felt his eyes open for a second, blinking feverishly, and focused the long, twisted and scarred face loom above him, watching him with a mixture of curiosity and concern. But sight was still too much for his feverish body and mind, and he noted, detachedly, the blackness ebbing into his minds eye and slipped into the comfortable abyss. In the senseless blackness of the abyss there were monsters, he somehow knew, but at least they were the monsters he had known since the day he was born.

_So cold, so cold, let it be over, let it end soon, please…_

And – even as far lost in his own mind as he was – the answer rang blatent, angry, and loud in his frostbitten, anguished ears; "**No."**

Two days later he broke away from the fever, and it took another day more to wake. Stress, fear, and misery had been building for weeks, and they had finally pushed their vessel over the edge; a self-compromised immune system made vampire blood nothing but a useless commodity.

After half a week of playing nurse to his assistant, Larten Creplsey was exhausted. His back and neck ached and his eyes hung heavy with fatigue. Accordingly, he was leaning against a rotting beam of the old barn that he had set up camp in when the boy stirred. The warmth of the fire he had built to keep the feverish boy warm was playing with his senses, casting dancing shadows on the walls. He only barely registered the shifting of the little lump of blankets nestled within the pile of dry, sweet-smelling hay. The vampire only fully woke as a ruffled brown mat of hair and flushed red face rose above the worn gold.

"Mhmm… Mr. Crepsley?" he murmured, eyes focusing strenuously on the still-blurry face of the older man. Larten blinked, looking vaguely owlish, and nodded, barely su. Darren reached toward his temple, registering a mild stinging above his eye – the vampire reacted quickly, reaching out to stop him. A rough, spidery hand gently caught his own and pushed it back down, away from the rough bandage he'd fastened around the boy's head.

"Stop. You will reopen the wound."

"The…? Oh…" he croaked, mouth suddenly dry. Darren's hand tentatively climbed to his hairline, gently fingering the rough cotton strips tied across his forehead with a grimace. Beneath his fingers flakes of blood chipped away from his pale scalp. Confused eyes darted up to Mr. Creplsey's, a question forming on his lips.

" It would not close due to the extremes in temperature," the man explained, " but it should be completely healed by now. You have been ill for a number of nights. Do you recall what happened?"

" I-I'm not really that sure," Darren murmured uneasily, "I remember seeing you ahead, but then the wind picked up and a branch – I think – fell, and when I came to you were gone…"

His eyes caught the light of the flickering flame like tiny, flawed jewels, and the intensity of the light made the slow welling of tears in them look as though they were spouting their own fire. Left behind in a stagnant, twisted, unfamiliar universe by his family, friends, and species, to be left behind a second time had been one of the worst feelings in the world. Shrouded, protected in the darkest region of his heart and mind a crack was appearing –

Unfamiliar arms wrapped protectively around the boy and he was engulfed in the smoldering warmth of a hug. Suddenly, crimson seemed to no longer be such a wicked color.


	8. Mourning

**8. Mourning**

Spoilers: 1-6

A/N: Slashing. Pardon my unparalleled love of Kurda and Gavner as a couple – even if my love translates into making them suffer all the more callously. If you ignore the implications, you don't have to read this as slash. Really, you don't.

But it's a mountain. Full of males. Without (or, rather, with few) women.

Men aren't as picky as they seem. Consider the ramifications of this drastically masculine population. Then get back to me with an opinion.

Ciao! 3

A sudden deadness squeezes tightly at Smalht's silent heart, and for a moment he forgets to breathe, a previously warm, glowing hue reduced to nothing more than the bleak pallor of early snow. He watches as the shadows – pursuing the angry frightened boy – disappear from the walls, and the echoes of footsteps leave him in loneliness. Kurda can only hope they will have mercy, even now as the damnable slowness of his thoughts eats away at the sensations he knows he should be feeling – regret and remorse and anguish. The strongest of words – the most fluent of history's greatest poets - could never describe the absolute desolation building at the back of the mind of the traitor.

His eyes cannot seem to focus on the wrecked marionette of a man lying broken on the ground, and they can only barely follow the contours of the limp arms, and the edges of the sluggishly flowing stain seeping out and across the sandstone floor. _(In the back of his mind, something cold and emotionless makes a mental note about cleaning this up before the vampires have a chance to send out a search party.) _There is a certain grace about him in death that Smalht has never seen before. The pose into which the body has fallen is almost too tragic, the arch of his broad back and commanding arms against the rough wall too perfect to be true. The arms are spread wide and welcoming, and Kurda almost – almost, but not quite – smiles, knowing quite well that either way he will join his fallen friend in the thereafter very soon indeed.

A ragged breath snags on his teeth as he catches the ghost of a vacant, lifeless profile in his gaze. His eyes snap closed, strengthening his resolve; he owes Gavner this much, at least. Still sightless, he reaches out a hand, guiding himself over to the empty shell – the thing that was once both his closest friend and his lover. He ignores the blood that seeps into the rough canvas of his trousers when he kneels next to it, and the universal wrongness of the cooling flesh he touches, fingers carefully avoiding the seeping laceration that had ended Gavner only moments ago.

The dagger lies discarded on the other side of the cavern, the blade still dark with spilled blood. Words that hold a double meaning, for both the murderer and the victim, grace the air via a delicate tongue: _Et tu, brute?_

It is both an apology and an accusation.

A warm, soothing breath [_in – hold - and out]_ steadies his nerves and his hand wanders up a quiet arm towards the face. He feels the rough, strong features and the marred, scarred flesh, twisting locks of soft hair between his delicate fingers. It feels so safe and familiar; he almost forgets that he will never observe the warmth and life so inherent to the life of the man lying before him. A shudder rakes through him and his stubborn resolve triples. A hand grips the heavy chin and the other guides the still face, bringing them cheek-to-cheek, and bringing life to cavort with death at a less than comfortable distance. Tired cobalt eyes open, registering the dreadful stillness of the deep chocolate ones he was once so familiar with. It breaks something inside of him and he feels his own eyes begin to burn – so he closes them, and buries his face in the crook between the neck and shoulder, smelling blood and stone and the familiar smell that had always defined Gavner when he was alive (something like sweat and cigar smoke, but so much sweeter). His arms wrap around the breathless chest and hug him tight, almost expecting a heavier, stronger pair to follow suit. Deep inside, he knows very well that they will not.

Time seems to loose meaning, and before long he cannot recall exactly how long he has been clinging to the corpse. The rising prince is determined - albeit reluctant - to leave the dead man alone in the darkness of the cave (Gavner never was too partial towards the dark, and all the obscurity that came with it.) but knows very well that it must be done. Plans must be revised, supplies gathered, units of vampaneze organized, and – most important of all – Darren had to be located and addressed sensibly. There is hope for the boy, even if there hadn't been for Gavner.

Kurda pulls away from the dark corner and rubs at an eye, his legs resistant after spending so long crouching in the dark and the cold. Strands of golden hair cascade over his eyes like little rivers of molten wheaten-gold, and – for a moment - he contemplates shaving his head in mourning for his lost love, as did the Egyptians such a very long time ago. In the end, he reaches the conclusion that it would be meaningless; after all, retribution will reach him, and the sacrifice of his honor and his heart will be so much more fitting in the end.

A final glance at the still form and he turns to go,

but not before raises a hand to Gavner's chin and places a chaste kiss on the dead general's forehead.


	9. Triumph

**9. Triumph?**

Authors Note:

Do you know what they're doing? :o

To be continued with an answer, of course.

"Oh my god, he's leaving - this is too good to be true!"

"You know," Harkat breathed with a grin, " This obsession with sugar… can't be good for you."

" It's not an obsession," the half-vampire shot back, " It's more of hobby, really, but that's beside the point..."

Harkat couldn't help but roll his eyes at the boy.

The two were crouched in a shadowy corner of the storerooms, Darren with a look of utter determination engraved onto his features while his partner-in-crime fidgeted, face twisted into a nervous grimace beneath the mask that kept his lungs healthy and functional.

It was a beautiful twist of fate, how the candles had melted over their sconces and were dribbling down the walls, slowly snuffing out in little puffs of whitish smoke. The failing lights flickered madly, and only a moment ago the quartermaster, Seba Nile, had pushed himself to his feet and set off to the back of the room for another crate of candles and matches. After all, how was the inventory to be taken when it was too dark to see? His muttering about defective candles had faded into the sound of dripping water and the scratching of rats' claws.

"Come on, then!" Darren whispered, quietly rising from his crouching position and crossing the distance between them and the mountain of supplies with great enthusiasm. This time, he reassured himself, he had a plan – a good plan, rather than his previous endeavors.

He glanced down the aisle into which Seba had disappeared (the storerooms were easily comparable to a maze, so even Darren knew this precaution was less pointless, with the chaotic isles created by the shelves and supplies) and moved over to the pile. Searching through the bags, the boy let out a little grunt of triumph when he finally came across what he had been looking for. Darren held it up in the dim light so Harkat could see, a wild grin plastered across his face.

The item in question was long and hollow, narrower at one end than the other, and ridged along one end in a whorl of plateaus and waves. Harkat was at a complete loss as to what it's function was, but he accepted the object when Darren handed it to him, feeling the smooth, cool texture of metal as he eyed it distrustfully. A few yards away Darren continued to dig in the pile, pulling out a few more of the apparatuses and digging further to grab a few rough swathes of woven canvas and three miniature tin buckets. A nail or two followed and Darren pulled away from the pile, clapping harkat on the back and taking back the strange little device. He wrapped all the small pieces in the fabric and dropped them into the bucket with a soft thud.

" Eh… Harkat? Would you mind carrying this for me? If Seba caught me with anything he'd be suspicious, but he doesn't think you'd help me." The boy inquired, holding out the packed bucket with pleading eyes that Harkat knew he'd never be able to resist. Puppy eyes were an irresistible temptation for the squat little man, strange as it seemed, and Darren was more than willing to use somewhat questionable tactics to get his supplies after so many failed tries.

"I suppose… but I'll remember this, Shan." He answered with a warm grin, taking the bucket with an over exaggerated bow, " Shall we, then?"

"Course. Wait 'till I show you what we're gonna do!" Darren whispered enthusiastically, grabbing his friend by the hand and tugging him into motion

The two ran over to one of the side entrances, caution abandoned, and exited the storerooms. A few yards beside the exit, a candle burst into life, casting flickering shadows over the triumphantly grinning face of Seba Nile.


	10. Finale

**10. Finale**

**AN: **Inspiration lost is eventually regained. I'm gonna try and get back into the habit of updating regularly – and feel free to provide me with a prompt, scenario, pairing, ect. to help me build up steam. I hope this update will do for now, however. 333 I love the summer!

The gash in her side is blossoming like a morning carnation across the stretcher, and the liquid blood is pooling in every crease and dip in the taut canvas, but it seems to her like the most natural thing in the world. Arra can't tell how long it's been since she fell, (the hours pass like wind-blown leaves, and the minutes at the pace of a turtle) but she knows that this is karma - karma for doubting and condemning the boy and all the others that came before him. She always has been notoriously prideful, she realizes with an icy dropping sensation, and it is a bitter pill to swallow on her deathbed; but if her hubris has taught her anything, it is that what is put before her she will manage, no matter how great the challenge. Now, to drift off into whatever lies beyond seems like second nature to her, and oh, how she longs to allow instinct to pull her into the comfortable dark.

But she has been disregarding her obligations – terrible but understandable, as the sensations ebb away and pour from her sullied flesh. She'd waved the medics off long ago, catching the hopelessness in their eyes and being well-aware of the impossible depth of the gash. Silently, she thanks her inborn, feminine predilection for empathy, for simply_ knowing _these things when they need to be known. Strong as Arra is (or pretends to be, a voice in her head accuses) the thought of looking down and seeing her intestines spilling out of the yawning red brings nausea to her and a new wave of pain as her muscles clench in response. She is also aware, through the anxious and sometimes spiteful looks cast towards her, that they are eager for her to hurry up and die – and she would, too, but she has a final obligation to attend to, and he is beside her, holding her hands in his own tight enough to crush human bones to pieces.

Larten has been perched beside her since they entered the infirmary, watching her like a hawk and barring her from the edge each time she closes in on the proverbial abyss. It longs to swallow her up and pull her away; he pulls her back, obstinate and hardheaded as always. He will not allow her to pass into the darkness.

Their partnership is a part of history, fallen to dust and obliterated from current affairs – and someday it will not even be history, because they will have left nothing to posterity but a frayed hole in a record that is nearly nothing but the absence of material.

His words have melted into obscurity for her ears and voice has transformed into white noise, which vaguely reminds her of nightingales singing and taking flight; she would love to drift away on such a beautiful key but, she considers, it is cruel not to listen to his desperate pleas. So she concentrates and defies the reluctant synapses, forcing logic and coherency to return to her slowing mind.

" – can beat this, Arra, I have seen you overcome worse. I am certain you can."

His hands squeeze hers tighter – his knuckles are white and bloodless - and it hurts, but now is neither the time nor the place to consider this, as she is well aware. He is still desperate for her to live, even while they both know her strength has reached an end. So she does her very best to sit up, feeling the gape of frayed flesh and it's solid, icy screaming hurt somewhere in the back of her mind. Startled, Larten has reached around her and grabbed her other shoulder, mercifully taking the weight from the wound. Her head lolls back on his shoulder and she takes a moment to savor just how right this seems – it has been years, after all.

Her voice is quiet and rasping, like raw timber stroked against the grain.

"I'm dying, Larten."

It registers somewhere in her darkening mind that he has rested his chin on her shoulder and buried his face in the filthy fabric of her shirt, and she can feel dampness of tears through the cloth. He pulls away straight-faced and stoic - as though he has not briefly lapsed into grief and shown her weakness – until the lines on his face crease suddenly in an expression of effortful deliberation. Arra takes advantage of the pause and pulls herself up a few inches, levering the weight onto her hips with an airless gasp of pain; but she can see his face better, and that is all that matters to her. The way his eyes are shining, shaded with thought, it might have been him doing the dying and her left to watch – but that would be far too cliché for her enjoyment… you weren't supposed to enjoy death, anyhow. He speaks dryly, emotionlessly, and she can tell that everything is seething, searing, and burning in waves inside him. The man's eyes, with their customary dirty olive losing their shine, tell her how terribly he is hurting. Larten speaks softly and sternly, like a child who, no matter how hard he tries, can simply not understand.

"You cannot."

She almost wants to laugh – but, then, that's probably the blood loss making her feel so hysterical. To laugh at him – inconsolable and confused, more pitiable than she has ever seen– would be an unforgivable sin. She wonders if, had the roles been reversed, she would have suffered as terribly as he is now; something makes her doubt it, but she leaves the subject in the shadows that have been dogging her grating breaths and narrowing line of sight.

"I'm afraid it isn't optional."

The truth is unpleasant, but she is sure he will handle it, will recover, and will return to the world unharmed; that is the nature of life, and he is strong. She feels life running like a river, a stream, a gently spouting faucet beneath yellowing compresses and wrappings. But Larten is insistent, squeezing her shoulders in a surprisingly gentle hug. He is determined, but it will do him little good.

"You cannot."

He seems unable to understand just how easy death could be, how easy it _was_. But, she knows, eventually he will learn. So she summons up a few dredges of strength from her reserves and lifts her uninjured arm around his shoulders in a lethargic gesture of comfort, tilts up her chin to meet his ear and whispers, "I must."


	11. Record

**11. Record**

A/N: I need more and more excuses to do these little things, but I love them so! 333

And I've got to love the response I got from my wonderfully supportive readers – you especially, chiba-x-thanks, 'cause I love those quotes to death – who do a great job of making sure that I keep going. I'm one of those people who thrives on feedback, so you ARE helping. And thanks so much for helping! =333

01. He has been ever so careful, has waited for exactly the right moment to set his plans into motion and – finally – his patience has been rewarded.

02. He loves to put his mark on the weave of history and whisper into the ears of the pawns on the board to change them into his own knights and castles. Each piece will serve its purpose, so it is without any misgivings that he catches his boys on that fateful day, slips up close behind the milder one's shoulder, and murmurs quietly "_now!"_

03. The man and the boy stand motionlessly on the stage – violent and pale, like grotesquely postured mannequins - as Destiny strokes the golden-copper molding of his timepiece, delighting for a moment in his flawless control over _absolutely everything_. A few yards away crouches the darker boy, eyes wide and mouth agape with fear and revulsion, perhaps even the mildest stirrings of hate – a snapshot for the family album, he decides. So the little man holds the flow of time for a bit longer, waiting his shrieks of mad laughter to echo from the highest balcony and slowly, slowly die away.

04. His suggestions are always gentle but the ears into which they are whispered never fail to heed them.

05. Desmond wonders how much time it will take to beat the altruism out of this particular child, if he happens to be the one who makes the final cut. He is sure it will not be a rapid process but has no doubts that – if Darren does triumph – the energy spent will be well worth it.

06. He watches them scuffle in the tall, stone-dotted grass from just beyond the lip of the hill, and glimpses the very first flickers of loathing – from both parties, whether they deny it or not – in their eyes. He is delighted.

07. Bravery, he decides, while advancing on his son like a panther and driving in the first real impression he will ever have of his real father, is rather annoying when not set to a useful end.

08. He visits Steven from time to time, watching him mature into something dangerous, defiant and malleable all at once, to give him a few pointers and make sure he ends up where he ought to be. It will not be long before he nudges both game pieces into play.

09. He makes a deal with Hiburneus, who has developed a soft spot for the whelp vampire; keep your nose clean, he tells him, and the boy will not suffer. It is made in earnest – he has always favored the man over Evanna, insufferable as she is – but they both know eventually will break it, and the circus master is well aware of what will happen when the words are nullified and he makes his final appearance in the jaws of fate.

Desmond rises from the groaning chair and casts a long look over the dark desk in his son's caravan, an uncommon display of the bleakest sort of affection.

10. To provide and protection and mercy all at once was not his initial intention, but it appears to be the safest and most expedient course of action. A harried soul will make almost any deal and call it a gracious one, given enough incentive.

11. Their father is there when his children are lifted onto the shoulders of their respective brethren, because he is too proud to pull himself away and too circumspect to allow circumstance to botch his plans. He is hidden in the shadows, the air, and the triumphant laughter of the onlookers; it is in this manner than Desmond sees one emerge from a rickety old coffin after a harsh night of flames virtually unscathed, and the other out wit his enemy and pull himself out of contempt and into exaltation.

12. A bloody little genius, that boy; but he stops and reconsiders his choice of words, because he is no longer a child but a man, fierce and fiery with his plans and his voice, like claws and teeth splitting open the skin.

13. Desmond experiences a warm flash of joy when the action begins; one child walks circles around the other with his plans, placing himself as a cuckoo in the nest, ready to wreak havoc on any bird or beast in it's path. He can see himself in those eyes as though they are mirrors.

14. A lifetime ago (a human lifetime, which – to him – is not so long after all) he would never have allowed himself to miss a natural disaster – the fiery wrath of a volcano appealed to his vengeful side, and the icy indifference of a flash flood sent pleasant little shivers down his spine – but it seems to Desmond that his interest in even such entertaining matters has began to wane. The stench of fear and smoke and flames no longer does it for him, because he has found something that entertains him even more; passionate flames have caught in his boys' eyes, and he loves it.

15. He watches, close at hand, as they run; he follows them down and down into the tunnels; the cries of anguish are loud enough to make the little man dance, and the smell of overcooked flesh is beginning to reignite his lust for carnage – but to top it all is the cunning of this little lord and the sheer desolation he imposes on his princely brother, as well as the utter and complete ferocity with which he pulls him all the way into the battle.

Impartiality be damned –

he might as well have a favorite.

16. Some of the despondency has left those childish blue eyes, but the emotion is still so strong he can almost smell it on him.

17. Steven has the merciless ferocity of a half-starved tiger and all the initiative to pull himself through, and he finds that he likes this combination very much. He shall have to see about that grandson.

18. Desmond – suddenly one son shorter – sheds but a tear at the scene of the crime, but the regret runs somewhat deeper than he allows to surface.

19. Having been well aware for a very long time that something in the cub vampire was changing, he is overjoyed to find a sudden fury in his eyes and his hands, ready to forfeit mercy and burn his own kin for no reason but revenge. Though the act is not brought to a head, this proves to be the critical moment he is waiting for; perhaps he is fickle, but his favored child changes.

The end seems to suddenly be so much nearer.

20. A brief interlude, but the chase is on again.

He follows it with his daughter, eyeing her and growling whenever she looks tempted to intervene. This is Desmond's own masterpiece, and he will allow no interference.

21. They are alone, circling like dogs in the darkness of an overpass – he can taste the malice, the excitement, and the fear in the air. Bloodlust is an overpowering emotion, like breathing cinnamon, and here – in the shadows, by the water, beneath the distant wheels of poison-spitting cars – it is smothers even him.

20. He burns with pride, watching them fight tooth and nail for a prize that they do not know they are eligible to win. Evanna – uncomfortable, he assumes – hangs back a few steps, but her eyes too are locked on the struggling pair, Cain and Abel revived, out for one another's throats.

21. There is no clemency for the frail; he is ready to step in and finish the loser (the talk is becoming something for a bore, though he does have an ear for the suggestion of torture) when the tables turn.

22. Desmond's grin is wide but grows wider still at the incomprehensible shock on both their faces when he confides in the boys his little secret; Steve, fighting to breathe and live just a few moments longer, gapes like a fish; Darren puts on the same look he saw on him years ago at the broken old theatre. Goading Evanna a few feet further so she too must revel in his success, he is forced to catch the laughter at their incredulity on his lips and shove it back down his throat.

23. Destiny is not amused.


	12. Glimpses

**12. Situations II**

Keep and eye out for more updates… sorry about the gap. 3

**1. Spoil**

Delicate fingers tapping lightly against the decaying hair of an oaken cherub, he observes them, watches them bicker over blood, trust, and alliances as they have done for centuries in a state of immortal stagnation. He has the awareness they need committed to memory, but he will sit silent and invisible, an observer and presence stronger than any of them could ever imagine or detect. There is a burning rage beneath the paternal smile as he watches them from his little balcony for what seems like the millionth time; but, he reminds himself, all possibilities must be considered. He will not fail this time.

And Desmond listens to them, marveling at their ignorance; because they do not realize just how very incorruptible blood really is.

What his innumerable children fail to realize is that the blood can never be tempted away from what it already is – the true culprit is the heart.

**2. Mood**

The mountain has an ambience that is strangely difficult to defy; the rough stone walls and crack-riddled floors are ghostly by themselves; the echoing voices that travel down the tunnels mile after mile; the soft whispering of ancient breathes across the empty halls; these combine to create a terribly gothic atmosphere that is potent enough to send the animals that wander into the tunnels straight back out again. It is a heretical idea to even consider the idea of change in this den-of-lions. However, Kurda Smalht seems to have no trouble breaking the spartan mood; he laces his walls with delicately inked baby-blue lithographs and somehow manages to procure some decorative pillows to soften up the corners of his coffin. Gavner has come to regard this addition very warmly.

**3. Pupil**

When he was out of place and busy tripping over the hurdles set in his way - even when in his youth he had been too blind to notice and to feel anything but childish resentment – Larten had been there to set him right, and the boy-cum-man never really had the chance to thank him for it. Each push had been in the right direction, every word placed carefully onto the tip of his tongue, and never (_never-never-never, the crafty old demon had told him with the shake of a finger) _had the man taught him to regard the sufferings of others as less important than his own.

**4. Addict**

Darren is remarkably well adjusted, for all he has been through.

There was the initial shock of coming across a vampire, and watching his best friend try to join the ranks of the undead. He dealt with that fairly calmly, all things considered. He's almost been responsible for the death of the aforementioned individual, but had righted that wrong by behaving in another traumatic manner – namely, becoming a vampire himself. The list continues, from nearly cannibalizing his little sister's blood to attending his own funeral – but when Mr. Crepsley had refused to buy him a soda at the run down little gas station as they were leaving civilization in pursuit of the cirque, he felt it was not only his right but his duty to lapse into a fit of hysterical laughter.

**5. Accident**

The sobs of the bereavement do not settle well on the Steven's ears and he can feel shivers (he is still too inexperienced to look death in the face without misgivings) roll down the small of his back, so harsh and angry make him feel suddenly ill, and make him wonder if he can restrain himself for the remainder of the viewing. He supposes he can, so the schoolboy drags himself forward to pass the open casket – to catch a glimpse of his beloved Judas, and fuel his ambitions and his rage to an appropriate end.

Keeping his face stony face is not difficult; nor is shedding a tear for the sake of appearances, or quivering a bit around the knees. Mrs. Shan pulls him into a desperate hug as he passes (she smells of the house and a hint of lavender, and he distantly postulates her racking sobs are undoubtedly more legitimate than his own) and Steve indulges her. Face pressed against her shoulder in an embrace more intimate than he would have allowed his own mother, he fights the urge to spoil the moment with the laughter that he can feel pushing against the walls of his belly in an urgent wave of mirth because, for the first time ages _he knows something they don't know_.

**6. Collection**

"_Beautiful…" comes the voice, hushed in his reverence for the delicate display balanced carefully on the uneven stone shelf above the coffin; and he reaches upward to stroke the polished, resin-stained wood that his lover has so painstakingly pressed together; but the walls shake and he looses his balance and he forces it over the edge with his excess strength; and the little box falls, and a hundred tiny wings flutter with the force of the updraft, ripping away from dried and mounted chitin abdomens, until there it a terrible, thought-shredding crash and the wood and glass and beauty and love all shatter into an eternity of pieces…_

Gavner wakes like a frightened bird, trembling and helpless, soaked to the marrow in his own dream-induced sweat. Breathing in gasps he stares blindly into the darkness, reaching out to stop himself from falling back into the abyss; he almost yelps when he hears wood scrape on stone – but suddenly there is a soft hand clutching his own and another smoothing down his damp hair and caressing his face, whispering softly and comforting him out of the frantic terror the dream has brought him. It takes him not a moment to place the voice, and his heartbeat slows.

"…shhh, Gavie, you're just fine…"

And the light returns to his eyes, and he can see again.

"… settle down, it's alright…"

He looks up at the empty shelf and at the thin, welcome face beside his own.

"… I'll let nothing hurt you…"

But there are some assurances – though gracefully articulated from honeyed lips, dripping with honesty almost too innocent for words – he cannot seem to believe.

**7. Promise**

_I will be forever at your side,_ they vow, but even as they stand together, hands clasping desperately tight in ceremonial unity beneath the glow of the harvest moon, and mouth the words are well aware that it is a promise they can will not keep. Larten is too stubborn, Arra is too proud, and they both know forever never lasts.

**8. Acquaintance**

The smiling lady ushers the boy and his father into the daycare, and then out through a little door in the back to show them where the children get their exercise. Little groups of boys and girls race across the woodchips and sand, and Darren watches them curiously as they tear in and out of the equipment – but his eye catches on a corner, where one little boy sits alone, watching the others with an unusual glimmer of maturity caught in the turn of his mouth and the gleam of his eyes. Darren feels a hand pull him up and into strong arms and loud, calm words smolder in his ear.

"You see that boy in the corner, Darren?" he asks. A nod. Dermot Shan sets his son down again and continues.

" Maybe you should go and play with him. He looks lonely."

The child's eyes grow to the size of picture frame (_all the better to see you with_, something silent whispers into his ears) and he stops walking, peeking around his father's leg at the distant child in an instinctual gesture of fear – but Dermot reaches down and pulls his slacks gently out of tiny, tightly clasping hands.

"But Daddy, he's –"

"Darren," he bends down to look his son in the eye, "There are some things in life that should be fair, and sometimes they aren't. This is something you can try to change."

**9. Doomed**

"So it's settled then. We'll put on our own production of _Chicago_. Now, to assign the roles…"

"Eh…?"

"Yes, Darren?"

"We haven't got enough girls."

"Didn't you study history in school? For the better part of history the roles of women have been filled by men – I sincerely doubt we'll have a problem finding actors."

"That's sort of gross… can you even picture any dancing around in drag without vomiting? Hairy legs and bulging calves and everything?"

"…"

"Kurda?"

"… you know, perhaps you're right."

**10. Murdered**

He rounds the corner and stops dead; and he is not the only one.

The destruction of the ribcage is enough to make him retch, with slivers of bone bending out from the glaring cavity in the chest and scattered in mounds all across the concrete floor; eyes are wide and staring, like twin marbles soaked in – oh, what is that odor? – blood. No mercy… and without the old man that was supposed to teach him (and, he notes with a sniff of irony, protect him), Steve knows he is dead. But he will not die like a helpless animal, so he lets the muscles in his shoulders sag and forces his breathing to hitch in little cloying gasps; and when he hears a sound close behind him he wheels with a sudden fury and lashes out with his knife –

and a hand catches his wrist like a steel trap, and he can feel the calloused palm grating against his own.

Then there is laughter – but this laughter is warm, not cruel or cold or patronizing – and an amused grin and a twist of the wrist that forces him to drop the dagger. The beast of a man releases his charge, picking up the dropped knife with practiced care and holding it out to him with a confidence the young man would never have expected. It is this casual air of power that finally finishes him, and forces him to listen when the man finally asks, "Who are you?"

**11. Bottom**

When she came to find him in the massive hall with her face flushed and hair rigorously disheveled, Larten was certain that this could only lead to trouble. The balding man did his very best to shrink, to slip into the shadow of his mug of wine – but a path seemed to materialize before the coming storm that was Arra and he cringes as her eyes cut into his own. Moving like lightning her lips curl back in a scowl and, as she nears, her hands slam violently onto the table while she growls low in her throat. Words come more lightly, in little hisses and spats like the breaths of a snake, laced with a similar amount of venom.

"Where. are. they."

It doesn't register with him for the first few moments who she is after, and why she has come to him and for whom she is looking – but it hits him like a slap in the face in moments.

"Darren, I suppose?"

"Yes."

Her fingernails are carving delicate, arching rifts in the oaken wood of the tabletop.

"I'm not sure…" he admits, face creasing as he considers where the boy might be and whether or not he should pass on such sensitive information to Arra while she is so violently angry, but – ah ha!

He shoots a hand down and his nails catch on flesh and cloth. Larten yanks his catch upwards, dragging a violently struggling Darren from his hiding place. The boy stills suddenly and shoots him an icy look, frowning in disapproval and looking thoroughly trounced and dejected. The older vampire stands up and guides his apprentice around the end of the table towards. There is silence for a moment during which Arra is stalk still; then she tilts he head, touches a finger to her left cheek, and gives her former partner a rather encouraging look before she sweetly inquires,

"What are your feelings on corporeal punishment, Larten?"


	13. Bedroom

**13. Bedroom**

A/N: A fitting title for number 13. no? XD

Nothing much – if a bit of slash.

As children they signed a pact in the dead of night, camping together in an overgrown little cemetery up the street on a dare from Tommy and Allen. Their lips were sealed tight against the sting of the penknife and the pressure of the other's fingers, squeezing out a few drops of cherry blood to sizzle and mix in the dying coals of the fire. The wind had picked up then, dragging the branches of the autumn-bared shrubs against the crumbling granite angels and crosses so that Darren yelped and crushed the palms of his hands against his ears to stop the dreadful din from breaching his ear drums and his sanity. Steve just laughed, and pulled the younger boy along behind him into the little tent that rose – a gaping, gasping, grinning mockery of a mouth – out from between two twisted old oak trees. They spent that night curled against one another, sharing their heat and their air and their frightened dreams as the world outside scratched with angry claws against the thin canvas walls and threatened to crush them to powder.

And so they had been blood brothers, tied together with scarlet oaths and the garnet chains of mutual affection. They knew that the night could never hurt them - not on their terms, nor on anyone else's, as long as they were together. But, like all children, they did not understand was that together was not forever.

The separation, when it came, was almost surgical in its intensity; shock set in like an infection, followed by an eerie, sterile calm. There remained no urge to linger or mingle in the grey, to sully the purity of their colors in one another's arms; just a sudden change of direction with enough momentum to make both their hearts flutter and collapse against steady ribs. The rosy carmine of their cheeks paled to snow – ignorance and innocence gone, the smiles that childhood gave them quickly changed, twisting into grotesque grimaces in the overwhelming presence of the twilight. The rift between them shot away into the dark forever, endlessly; their gazes, unmettled, drew out the eyes of the abyss – and with them came a hungry, jagged smile that threatened worse than death.

Boyish wrath incited, they stared back. The fairer child-now-man was cruel and expressive, loud as the bells of the churches he had forsaken. His counterpoint and foil, the dark little child, lingered behind in the trail of carnage, casting furtive glances across the divide; his physiognomy was softer, kinder, and more resistant to corruption – but innocence served as no defense against discoloration. They shared the same beginning, and – though their lives may have wandered along the way – their fate would be the same. Shan and Leonard – even as children, everyone knew that they would stick to each other until the end. And they did.

In the end they both became tainted, because, inside, they were the same…

and there is not a soul (_damaged, scarred, soiled, irreparable_) in this world flawless enough to resist the temptations of fate. The were equally marred

And on that fateful night they knew they would, forever, be somehow together; never alone, it hurt to be so – a nail through the hand and another in the heart so neither could ever look at the other again without the faintest flutter of his heart and a rushing of blood in his ears. It was a dull hurt that sharpened with time, so by the final eve it was a clawing sensation at the back of their eyes, urging with terrible fury the desecration of the bond they had so foolishly formed, all those years ago; it was an escape, a means of drowning out the chaos, severing the limb from the jaws of death.

Their first kiss had been startling, like a chalice running over with ruby wine; there had been pressure, filled with fire and brimstone, eating slowly away at their bodies and minds; but what was the most frightening was the yearning for friction and heat and touch, when the world was so cold around them. The tension had built up around them until it was terrible, too terrible for them to stand – and then it was gone, in a rush of livid bliss. What was more frightening was that, even in the end, it never stopped.

It had left them broken in its wake; separated, desperate, needy, and so very much the same that the distance hurt like crucifixion. And, they would agree, better to die than live through so little and so much all at once. And then came something new - an urge that they shared, despite the miles, that pulled them apart and sewed them right back up in a way that felt so right, and that left them weak and trembling, a mass of limbs and teeth and licentious gazes. It drove them, and eventually it ended them, annihilation by mere proximity – but not until they bled each other dry.

After all, it was only a matter of time

before one of them woke up face down on the bedroom floor.


	14. Secret

**14. Secret**

(I'm back, you know. Be pleased! 3 I've vowed to go back and edit some of my older work, starting with The Fall. Expect more updates with time.)

"You are far too loud, Darren," the red-haired vampire barked from across the clearing, eyes flashing in the crepuscular light that filtered down into the crescent of lightly treed mountain clearing.

He sat calmly against the trunk of a massive lodge pole pine, the very image of peaceful contemplation, his calloused hands folded neatly over the thick red cape folded in his lap. It was a placid night, pleasantly temperate for a region for far north, and the snow had melted away to reveal a delicate network of young shoots and infantile flowers rising from the ground. The crocuses were delicate and ashen, rising from the muddy ground in elegantly powdered purples and whites, running with veins of pale ivory; the squill rose in waves of vivid ocean blue, beginning to bloom first in the cirques and sheltered corners of the mountain; bloodroot, a pallid tuber that leaked a vivid, acrid-smelling sap seemed to keep to the shadows; the honeysuckle had gone into its fetid bloom, and the juniper bushes were dropping their mint blue berries generously. It was the first time in thirty-three years that the mountain's northern summer had been powerful enough to fight away the snow.

Thoroughly spent and exasperated, the boy threw up his hands and broke through the bushes that had been his cover; his frustrated feet crushed the undeveloped young sprouts back to the ground as he stomped back to his mentor with a severe frown perched (flightily as a cardinal) on his lips. The older man refrained from telling him how infantile the expression was, how closely the scowl made him resemble an infant denied his favorite toy. Darren's bare feet (it was warm enough that the winter boots kept in the mountain recollected to be saved for severer weather, and shoes were no help in an exercise meant to improve the boys stealth - of his discipline, for that matter) were caked in mud and strands of leaves and grass where he had tried to muffle his footsteps with the flora he had suddenly gained access to. He gamboled over to his waiting teacher and plopped the driest patch of ground he could find, wrinkling his nose and picking pieces of leafy refuse out from between his toes.

The boy expected to be chided, to be told to try again, but as he glanced to the side the man beside him had turned his gaze back to leaves shifting in the breeze and the diamond-bright stars suspended in empty darkness. Darren leaned back against the trunk of the pine, echoing his mentor, with his legs extended delicately before him though the sallow peach skin was tinted olive green with muddy grass stains. Looking up, he counted a million constellation tied together with spider's thread.

Not a word was exchanged between them; they sat together, steeping in the perfection of the moment. Larten understood such fleeting beauty better than he liked, and knew it far to well to interrupt the serenity with words and orders - sheer exposure such timelessness held it's own wisdom, a truth more meaningful than any lesson could ever be. He recalled his years training beneath Seba, and the rare moments that came when the world did seem peaceful and beautiful, and how he had even then had wished to know this world more intimately, to understand the mechanics of fate and conquer every step he took, to adjust his balance and take all his life in stride. It was a foolish aspiration. He had the mind of a philosopher but his temper was not so well suited. Even so, the seasoned vampire could remember each frustration, impossibility, dead end road, or impassable wall that had presented itself and spat in his face and in all there had been value, because these trials had taught him how to live in a way Seba's advice simply could not. Life was change, and happiness transient... someday the obstinate little beast at his side would have to learn that lesson as well.

Something heavy pressed against the rise of his shoulder and Larten broke away from his reveries, allowing the smell of the trees and the sound of the leaves dancing overhead purchase in his thoughts again. The man glanced down to see the boy leaning heavily against him, chest moving subtly with the soft puffs of breath that come only with sleep. The boy's messy brown hair and lightly freckled face were vividly visible even in the half-light, and by the tilt of his lips and the relaxed cadence of each inhalation seemed to indicate Darren was comfortable. Larten grunted softly (it was an amusing sight; the boy was so independent, hardly prone to displays of sentimentality) and turned back to the stars, careful not to shift his weight or otherwise dislodge his sleeping apprentice. They seemed to grin at him from the heavens - if only Gavner or Arra were here to see this indulgence, this rare display of affection. It would have surprised them, he is certain, with all their jibes about the paternal instinct and his apparent lack thereof.

He shall never admit it to a soul but he misses Gavner dearly, and knowing that he will never see Arra again is almost unbearable. The man had always been an expert at controlling his emotions through his breathing. He diverted his attention from the pain by turning back to Darren and lifting a hand to carefully brush the mess of hair back from softly closed eyes - a bit of affection that is reserved for the boy only when he was unawares, only when he slept; everyone keeps a secret.

In the distance he could smell rain clouds rolling in, and mourned the loss of the helium giants burning above; he shifted delicately, brushing leaves from the oversized blue cardigan the cub-prince had chosen, and gathered the boy into his arms for the trip back to the mountain.

Overhead, the clouds pressed in and smothered the stars.


	15. Butterflies

**15. Butterfly**

_A/n: I associate monsieur Smahlt with butterflies, it seems. You may be interested in listening to the Katzenjammer song Wading in Deeper to enjoy this a bit more – it sounds so absurdly like Kurda to me, it isn't even funny. o.0_

When they asked him if he believed in paradise, the rising prince told them the truth forwardly, even if it was not what they wanted (or expected, or needed) to hear. His words were not flattery, neither abridged nor sugar coated; so his truth manifested itself like icy black feldspar along the edge of a riverbed, sharp and painfully unashamed. The young man was here alone and incompatible, a mismatched piece of clockwork trying to make it's way into the machine – and was not an undiplomatic shadow that Smahlt cast across the rushing water but his path was edged by the continental shelf, and (even he knew it) just one misstep could send him tumbling down to the darkest, coldest depths known to man. Is he a mouse or a man, a traitor or martyr?

It is a fine line and he knows it.

x.X.x

Sometimes, Gavner told him, when you got close enough and the light was just so, you could see just an icy void reflected back in his peacock-blue eyes, like his insides ate up all the light – and then he reached out a heavy hand, laid it on his shoulder, gave him a trademark this-is-for-your-own-good smile, and asked him to, please, please, please be careful.

The silence between them had lasted just a beat too long and for the first time the smaller man caught a soft-edged flash of fear in the other man's eyes – but this was beyond him, them, and everyone else - so Kurda grinned and brushed the hand lightheartedly away. He tossed his head dismissively and changed the subject, and they left the little alcove, walked back into the throngs of tussling vampires and joined the games together (for the last time).

x.X.x

Kurda met his first vampaneze early in his servitude, positioning himself carefully beside the man who blooded him and tried hard to look away as the two circle and growl like wild animals, wolves quarreling over a recent kill. The purple-tinted skin seemed obscene, at first, since it contrasted so strongly against the snow, but he watched how gracefully the man bearing it moved (_in, out, in, out, side to side like a vipera berus skidding across the road_) and began to admire, if only a little, how this 'beast' did not threatened him to gain leverage, as his own master would have done if the vampaneze had possessed a mirroring apprentice. In fact, he had initiated negotiations before the battle began, and assured his wretched master that the quarrel would not extend 'his dog', and that the apprentice would remain unharmed if he happened to die, not that his safety was of any concern to the man.

It is his first encounter with honor, and it changes his tastes forever.

x.X.x

He knows, deep down in the pit of his stomach, he'll someday have wrapped himself too tight in the nettles and thorns of his carefully crafted world and it will crash down around his ears. The wound will be deep – reach the very marrow of his bones – when he realizes how deep the water he treads has gotten without him noticing, and how far he is from the safety of the familiar shallows. He will fight the waves halfheartedly, for a while, until he has coughed up all the butterflies that drove him this far out to sea. Kurda will watch them fly away (see how gently they crest the foamy waves and rise, one by one, the salty ocean gusts) with the pride of a father and hope that – somehow, somewhere – their tiny wing beats will make a difference.

Then, he will let go and sink beneath the waves – drowning is only terrible for those who feel the need to fight the crushing embrace, struggle for one last gasp of clover-sweet air. But Kurda, as everyone he has ever met will attest, is not among these men; he was born in the clutch of Russian winter, and he has seen the frosted craquelature slither up and bring even the fieriest tempers into check, like brazen colts being trained to take the bit. Among the things that he has inherited from mother Winter, he decides, sits the resignation with which he will accept the blows of fate and, finally, fall into the death that has been breathing down his neck for all these years.

x.X.x

Particular crisis and turning points aside, life has come, sniffing at his heels like a regular pet. The cycles are constant, and he feels he can predict the turning of the tide – and if he can predict it, why shouldn't he work to change it for the better? He remembers all the times he has, clinging to the sheer walls of the German ghettos and tossing scraps of bread and cheese to the children clustered inside, even blankets and candies when he could. He flitted between the towns and spread word of the evacuations at Dunkirk, even broke the rules (not that rules matter so, after all) and carried babies to aunts, grandmothers and sisters already waiting at the coast when families had no hope of reaching the boats before the Germans would catch them. It is not weakness, he tells himself – and the men who corner him in the deserted tavern and meant have killed him, if the little girl he had been relocating hadn't run and sounded the alarm – that makes him spend so much time protecting the same people and righting the same wrongs, but compassion.

x.X.x

He went to say his vespers, once, on a windy night beneath a cloudless, red ribbon sky, at the little chapel above his village. He had chased the owls and foxes along the lightly powdered woodland path – he had never seen a butterfly, and so he made do pursuing the little grey squirrels from tree to tree and peering down rabbit-holes – up the hills and through the trees. The temperatures were harsh and the wind was biting but life prevailed even where there were no hearths to warm the bones, heart, and lungs.

He had prayed like a devil, that evening, fervent in his thanks. His hands were clasped tight beneath the alter and his eyes remained humble, never strayed once from the knotted whorls of the wood-grained floor. He had left the church with a warm smile to the priest.

When he neared his family home just after the sun had set, a neighbor rushed out to stop him. Her eyes were grave and tearful, but her words made him feel dizzy, and he rocked like a crib in the face of the wind. They had come, she told him, for his family, called them enemies of the state, and rushed them away into the woods at gunpoint.

Their fate was unquestionable; later, that evening, her husband went and fetched his father's pocket watch for him, and marked the graves properly. The house had been butchered, walls punched through with the fifteen rifle butts, thatch roof massacred by their violent ministrations. He sat beside the hearth that night too cold and shattered to feel the warmth of the flames, and knew that there was no god.

x.X.x

He is a traitor and a victim, wrapped in the guise of innocence, a wolf among sheep among wolves, but he is saving the angels and the devils from a far greater evil. The vampire is familiar with human philosophy, particularly the chaos theory. Something as simple as a butterfly's wing… he beats them all the harder.

x.X.x

A few weeks into his apprenticeship, the youthful blonde had stumbled across a baby owl, vulnerable and fallen on the wintry forest floor. He had tucked the owlet into his tunic and fed it bits of mouse and pocketed scraps of raw venison for it, and had kept it warm with his own heat and breath. But then the helpless infant had been discovered.

"Enough," the man growled, grabbing his wrist and twisting until the downy little bird chirred frantically and fell to the snow. Kurda snatched his hand away and dove after the infant, only to fall with a heavier thud in a deep drift of snow as he was kneed in the side mid-leap.

"You are becoming too involved. This is nature, мальчик, and you," the tall, broad man barked, "you would change her, corrupt her way like a dog pissing in the fields. Vampires have no for time sentimentalism."

"But, sir, it hasn't hurt a thing, and haven't stolen a thing, I've fed it from my own portions, honestly–"

"No, idiot! Now, stay there or I will make you."

The threat was a valid one, as he had been taught early into his apprenticeship. There was a sudden, tense calm between the two men, because Kurda had not lost all of his spirit to the man, and could not bare to pander, could hardly stand to bend because he knew exactly what the wretch would do to the bird –

Then he looked away in submission, murmuring an apology in heavily accented, broken Czech to his master even as the man stepped roughly forward and stained the snow with innocent blood.

x.X.x

Kurda could tell they were all staring at him, feel their eyes on their back. The young vampire's face reddened as he forced himself to stand tall, weave his way between the long tables, and find a seat at the far end where he could breathe. That man – he had never thought he would meet someone too cruel be called by his own name – had humiliated him, and he had snapped, lost his patience and fought back like a tiger. He was not feral, hated the propensity violence that had been afforded him; the half-vampire had even managed to get a few good blows in before he stopped himself (the sensation of turning on his sire like a rabid dog was foreign and upset his stomach – he was not so seditious at heart) and allowed himself to be felled by the heated blows. Now he ached and his lungs quivered passionately under the screaming, hellfire pain that would not leave his ribs. Bruises swam in a muddled haze across his arms, and he likened the colors to the first night he spent alone in life.

He had come full circle. After that man had beat him into a fog of memories and vague, detached sensation, he had disowned him, left him alone like a cur without a master to die in the streets. There would be no supplication this time because the louse had grabbed his walking stick and disappeared from the mountain without another word. It was a relief to be rid of the bastard, truthfully, but the world was not a forgiving place and with that display in the entrance hall he will be seen as nothing more than a mistake, a scourge on the clan. The blonde man could feel the pressure build in his throat, threatening tears, pushed his face into the dirty palms of his hands and stayed that way. His ragged breaths did not slow.

Tap, tap, tap, and the pressure of a heavy hand came to his shoulder –dour blue eyes raised themselves and he turned. Beside him is a substantial man, average in just about every way. This particular vampire is brown haired, brown eyed, and showcases the beginnings of a collection of battle scars – however, his most prominent quality is the asinine looking mother-bear smile that was then blinding him like a bonfire. Somehow, he cannot help but feel a bit warmer and smile weakly back.

For the first time in ages Kurda felt something reminiscent of humanity uncoiling in the back of his throat. Maybe he is not quite as alone as he thought.

x.X.x

The air is rushing over his back and whipping at his neck (the descent into madness is slower than he thought, because he has had time to think this much) and as he feels his body slip away from him, into the abyss, cannot help but wonder.

Perhaps he is, after all, just the dream of butterfly.

FIN.

_A hundred years isn't a bad guess in terms of Kurda's age, is it?_

_Of course, I made him Russian. And I actually learned some history with this one. _

_I feel so bad for beating Kurda up and traumatizing him as much as I did, but adversity not only builds character and strength but also inspires._

_мальчик – boy_


	16. Angel

**16. Angel**

Perched in the darkness and waiting, Steve cannot decide whether or not he really has heard the chirps of the crickets in the tall grass growing up around the graves, or the mournful cooing of a dove ever before in his life, or whether these sounds are simply new because they are ringing loudly through the churchyard air, he is sitting (still as one of the corpses below him) against the wings of a prostrate, crumbling angel. The noise feels strange to his straining ears; his world is full of car horns and shattering plates, the sort of chaos that a person is born into and hardly ever notices, if only because it is their own personal chaos, their own, secret hell. He can feel the bony finger's of the midnight breeze catch at the neck of his shirt –- he has dressed to match his surroundings, black as ashen river tar –- and he shifts, hooking an arm around one of the mossy wings and lifting himself up, up, up –-

Then he is riding on the breeze, sitting on the shoulders of the fallen and feeling the night air rush past his face, and for a moment he is the child that he ought to be (would have been, if things had been different), face like a beacon, a lightning-flash of sanctuary in a vile storm. The boy raises his arms to the sky, echoing the statue, but his expression is like a breath of air, enough to turn a butcher from the blade. Here he is pure, innocent, and happy; his purpose in coming here is forgotten for an instant, lost to the ceaseless whispering of the trees and the soul-cleansing calls of the barn owl. Perhaps, he thinks for a moment, this is what sanctuary feels like. He realizes that he has been holding his breath, and exhales with a cry of joy. He does not hear the gasping, grinding moan or feel the reluctant rift arching it's way in gossamer threads through the very heart of the stone. He is oblivious (happy) even as gravity forces the upraised arms (older than stone should ever live to be, and far too cruel for it's years) snap and pull him down.

The worst things in life are so sudden that they are nearly painless.

He can almost feel a wound opening up in his mind as his seat goes out beneath him. For a moment, Steve feels like his soul is heavy as rock, pulling him down, and the boy wonders if this has all been a dream, and if he is really just stone, sinking quickly into darkness, and the unfathomable abyss of the continental shelf. But then his chin jerks towards the moon and his eyes are flickering between the blurring stars, and he tumbles to the earth.

Then his vision swims back into place and he is on the ground, back spine screaming in agony that hardly seems like it should belong in a human body because it is so damn strong that he can't seem to feel anything else. He shifts with tight shut eyes, bites his lip and holds back a scream because _god it feels like his skin is ripping and he can't stand it, why didn't he just die_, and stills, breathing fast and trying to quiet the mad thumping of his heart.

He remembers on summer when he discovered a tiny nest of rabbits (still downy soft and white as doves) in the shed behind the house. The boy had stroked each tiny creature, watched them huddle close to one another in the little scrape, saw how they loved one another, siblings, blind and deaf but _together_ all the same. There had been beauty in that moment; yes, perhaps envy as well; but there was also something else. It was something entirely new, a feeling that he could not quite place. It made his fingers tingle and his chest feel warm, like it had filled with the dying rays of a summer afternoon. He had lifted one of the delicate creatures up, holding it in the palm of his hand, stroking the fur behind it's ears - and then that feeling (liberating, raw, vibrant and _thrilling_) had taken a hold of him and he had closed his hand over it's tiny nose, felt it weave and struggle, weak as a kitten, against his hand. There was no effort in holding it, or blocking it's nose and mouth, only instinct, and morbid curiosity. Then, suddenly, he realized that the animal has gone still as a stone. It's sides had stilled, and the heartbeat - he could recall its rhythm, frantic under the pads of his fingers - had gone, drifted away into the ripe red poppies and bleeding hearts that his mother had planted in the garden. He had settled the little corpse back into the nest and pulled out another kit, felt its breath ghost over his fingertips. That night, he dreamed of roses crushed between his palms; tonight, the beat of his heart echoed the frantic, fading beats of their pulsing lungs as they struggled for air, and as they succumbed.

Then, Steve cannot stay on the ground; he bites his lip, feels his teeth meet in the middle, and rolls onto his side. His gasp –- and the wave of crashing, stabbing torment that follows it –- is sharp and jagged. Then he is crouched beside the massacred angel, hands slipping gently over his legs, back, and chest - he is not so ignorant, anymore, as to think that he is infallible –- to check for breaks or blood, feeling the blood well up in his mouth from a fresh-punched hole in his tongue. His fingers come away clean - at least he thinks so, because his eyes are still swimming (from a concussion or from tears he can't quite tell) and the night suddenly seems darker to him, the moon less welcoming, and the calls of the dove patronizing laughter. Suddenly, he longs for a rifle to shoot the mirth from its song.

Steve limps forward, running the edge of his painfully abraded palm along one arm of a stone cross, and gazes at the ruined angel. It seems sadder than before, pitiable, even, now that he has crippled it. Now it is limbless, wingless, and neglected, dissolving into the history of mankind; soon it will be nothing more than a pile of rosy marble dust, and - perhaps - a memory. Maybe, if it is lucky, he will allow it that much. He gambols forward unevenly, reaching out to run his hands over the somber expression. His fingers linger over a cheek, a nose, a lip...

Then a flash of anger strikes him, because the face is proud, unchanged, _infallible_; all the things he envies, but can never truly be. Steve spits, snarls, and jams his shoulder against the statue's chest, presses with all his might –- and he feels the marble give, watches ankles collapse into dust, and hears the stone seraph plummet from its pedestal. He limps forward and gazes on the ruined face, the unidentifiable plateau of rubble, and feels a fire light somewhere deep within, intimate and close to his heart. It is a familiar burning, something that he has almost _missed_.

_I have fallen,_ he thinks, chin pressed close to the ridge of his chest, _but I will not have fallen alone._


End file.
